Escape the News: Games to Distract You… A War of Whispers
There’ll be just as much backstabbing as whispering. Photo © 2026 WargamesandWhisky.com
All that whispering makes for a crowded board. Photo © 2026 WargamesandWhisky.com
Welcome to the final entry (for now…) in our series which encourages you to escape from the news with a whisk(e)y and a wargame. If you missed the earlier installments, you can find them here.
Does conquering the kingdom seem cool, but you hate marching through the mud to all those far off battlefields? Would you forge an empire - or rule over its ashes - if it weren’t for getting your hands dirty? Do you think Littlefinger and Varys were the heroes Westeros needed and deserved?
Well, friends, welcome to A War of Whispers. (Note: we earn a commission from the affiliate link at no additional cost to you.)
In the world of A War of Whispers, five mighty kingdoms clash, yet their kings are completely unaware that their every move has been predetermined, and their fate manipulated in the shadows by figures unknown – and that’s where the players come in! Not as a kingdom, or a king, or even a general, but as a secret society owing allegiance to no one except themselves and a nefariously secretive agenda.
In terms of mechanisms, this is carried out in standard worker placement fashion as players take turns placing their Agents into the ruling councils of the five kingdoms, thus dictating where those kingdoms raise troops, where the generals order an advance, or even if the kingdom’s armies should abandon their stations entirely. Each turn every action space on the board will happen, but it depends on which player’s Agents whispers first.
The key mechanism in A War of Whispers is the secrecy of player objectives, goals that score points at the end of the game for each city on the map a given kingdom ends up controlling. These points can range from 2 to -1 points per city, and the distribution is different for each player. It is kept secret throughout the game, leaving rival secret societies to deduce the real agenda of their rivals based only on the machinations they can see on the board. In A War of Whispers, true victory is not achieved on the battlefield, it is whispered in the dark as the world burns just outside the safe walls of the council chamber.
Ardbeg Ten is the product of patience. Photo © 2026 WargamesandWhisky.com
In a war of whispers, the long game matters. Biding your time - until the right pieces are in the right places - wins the game. It’s the same kind of patience you need to achieve Ardbeg Ten, the distillery’s legendary 10 year old offering. It starts off smoky and briny, lashing you with the smoke from a roaring fire and salty sea spray, but then it mellows to the vanilla and citrusy sweetness of a perfectly laid plan coming together. Ten is a reminder that outlasting your enemies takes precision, persistence, and perseverance.
